


neither of us will be missed

by librarby



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Chronic Pain, Friendship, Gen, Mobility devices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25001845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/librarby/pseuds/librarby
Summary: Daisy makes a noise that he can’t quite place, something between amusement and annoyance (it’s hard to tell the difference between them with her). “The normal dose for those is two, you know.”“I have eldritch healing powers, I can take as many painkillers as I want.”[title from saint bernard by lincoln]
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 13
Kudos: 133





	neither of us will be missed

**Author's Note:**

> my fibro was acting up so i took some motrin and wrote this in like one sitting.  
> for reference, jon has fibromyalgia and daisy uses forearm crutches (for her muscle atrophy)

Jon knows he’s been sitting for too long when he 1) hears the sound of Daisy’s crutches coming down the hallway and 2) suddenly feels the soreness of his joints from being in the exact same position for four hours.

His eyes are squeezed shut in pain when the door opens, trying to stretch out his left leg from where it had been tucked underneath his chair. His knee clicks in an unnatural way and sends a sharp shooting pain up his body. Someone raps their knuckles against his door frame and he opens his eyes, even though he already knows who it is. “Afternoon.” He says, his voice just on the edge of strained.

“Up, Sims. We’re going for a walk.” Daisy says in lieu of an actual greeting. She’s got that slightly wild look in her eye, one that doesn’t quite fit the bony body she now lives in, one that means she’ll start rattling the bars of her cage if she doesn’t chase soon.

(Jon understands.)

“Okay. Hold on and I’ll get my coat.” He says, rifling around in his desk drawer for the pill bottle he knows is there. Shaking four round pink painkillers into his hand, he swallows them dry and stands up, grimacing from the new points of pain that seem to appear all over his body from the sudden change in position. The Eye updates the helpful list in his head of exactly which joints hurt.

Daisy makes a noise that he can’t quite place, something between amusement and annoyance (it’s hard to tell the difference between them with her). “The normal dose for those is two, you know.”

“I have eldritch healing powers, I can take as many painkillers as I want.” He holds the door for her as they leave his office. She responds with another unidentifiable sound, this one that resembles a laugh.

They never walk through the actual city. Too many possible statements for Jon, too cramped for Daisy, and much too loud for the both of them. They walk out to a park that’s about a ten minute walk from the Institute’s front steps. It usually takes them fifteen minutes, but that’s neither here nor there.

The park is open and grassy, with trees dotting the edges and paths, hiding the traffic and city bustle just beyond. It’s well past when the average person would have left work, so the park is already alive with the sounds of chatting mothers pushing strollers and the yelling of a group of Year 12 boys tossing a frisbee between themselves. Daisy sits down on the first bench they come across, her legs shaking ever so slightly.

Jon sits next to her, ignoring the feeling of eyes against his back. He’s somewhat used to it by now, what with the streaked greying hair and odd scars running across his face. People are naturally curious (and he of all people could not fault them for that), but he almost feels the stares as a physical thing now, a weight settling against his body. It doesn’t hurt, thank god, only because he’s not sure how he would be able to tell the difference.

He reaches for Daisy with his non-scarred hand.

She takes it silently, threading their fingers together. It’s a touch too cliche to say that a sense of calm washes over him, but he does take a deep breath, so that has to count for something. The air outside is cool and fresh, much better than inhaling dust down in the Archives.

They’re an odd pair, Jon knows. Daisy’s tall with all the wrong proportions, and she has her own fair share of scars covering her body. The crutches are enough to make small children stare and the subtle point of her teeth is enough to make parents lead them away quickly. Even with his own scars, Jon is short and relatively nonthreatening in comparison, but he now gets told that his gaze is intimidating. He stares at the ground and tries to ignore Beholding nudging him toward the boy catching the frisbee, who he can feel has a story for him.

His grip on Daisy’s hand tightens for just a moment as he asks her if she’s ready to start walking again.

Stretching his legs feels good even though there’s still a dull ache underneath. The pain will improve in the long run but right now, well, he’s just glad he took the painkillers before they left.

“Basira went out to speak with her contact again.” Daisy says as they walk. Their pace is slow but Jon finds it doesn’t bother him.

He frowns. Basira keeps chasing all these so called ‘leads’ and coming back with little to nothing to show for it. He’s trying so hard to trust her, just like he’s trying so hard to trust...just like he’s trying so hard to trust everyone. “Did she say when she’d be back?”

“Nope.” Daisy says, kicking at a rock on the path. It goes skidding into the grass. “Never tells me anything, anyway. Why should that be different?”

“Sorry.”

“Sims. Don’t apologize. Not your fault.”

“Still,” He glances over at a couple sitting in the grass as they walk by. One of the girls has her head in the other’s lap as she reads a book out loud. Waves of Loneliness roll off the first one and he looks away. “You shouldn’t have to deal with that on top of physical therapy and...everything else.”

“Whatever.” Daisy’s knuckles are white around the grips of her crutches. He bites his lip so he doesn’t press further.

He knows she doesn’t want pity. To be fair, he can’t really bring himself to feel bad for her, what with all she’s done. Still, he can see how hard she’s been trying to change, trying to be better than she was. Basira can’t seem to see that, running off doing, well, whatever it is she’s doing.

They walk in comfortable silence after that, making their way around the big walking loop that runs through the entire park. After a while, people stop staring at them and Jon feels the pressure of their eyes falling off him at last. He can almost imagine they’re just two friends, taking a stroll. Simply two friends who wanted to walk through the park, instead of...whatever they are now.

Daisy stops in her tracks once they’re almost back to the bench they began at, eyes tracking all around the scene in front of her. Jon might have imagined it, but he could swear he sees her nose twitch in a way that is not particularly human.

“Daisy? What’s wrong?” He asks, keeping his voice low. There’s no whirring tape recorder that he can hear, but that doesn’t mean it’s not around.

She doesn’t answer for a long moment, still scanning. Then he hears: “Rich threw it over there, the fucking idiot.” The group of frisbee throwing boys are moving their way, now noticeably frisbee-less.

Daisy’s eyes flash. He thinks for a moment about pulling her back, but...it’s a frisbee. There’s not much The Hunt could really do with a frisbee, is there?

(He pointedly does not try to Know the answer to that question.)

Jon just trails behind her as she walks up to the base of a relatively large tree. For some reason Beholding decides to supply him with the scientific name ( _Acer campestre_ ) but nothing helpful about where the frisbee may be in its branches.

Luckily, Daisy only stands there for a few seconds, her head tilted back as she searches. The shadows hit her face in an odd way, one that makes her teeth seem longer and her eyes darker. Before he can protest, she’s slipping one of her forearms out of the cuff of her crutch and raising it above her head, shaking one of the branches.

“Daisy—” He’s unsure of where the sentence is meant to go from there, so thankfully the frisbee falls to the ground with a _thunk_ before he has to continue. Her arm is shaking with exertion as she brings the crutch back down to the ground, strapping herself back in.

“Pick that up for me?” She says dismissively, before turning to where the boys are searching one of the other trees and calls out to them. “This yours?”

Jon picks up the frisbee. His back protests the entire time he’s bent down and somehow stings even more when he’s back upright.

“Oh sweet, thank you!” A boy with dark hair puts a hand up. The Eye is kind enough to remind him how to throw a frisbee, an action he hasn’t performed in well over twenty years, though the motion of his arm is still a bit stilted when he actually tosses it back. The dark haired boy makes the catch much more dramatic than is likely necessary, then turns to smack the plastic disk against one of his friend’s heads. “Richard, you fucking moron!”

They quickly dissipate into arguing, moving back across the park while shoving one another and laughing. Daisy lets out a breathy ‘heh’.

“Nice throw, Sims.”

“Um, thanks.” Jon says. “Er, feeling better?” She actually does laugh this time, a sound that’s throaty but soft.

“I’m like a dog now, huh?” She says, that dry cadence in her voice that he has started to associate with humor. “Chasing toys and barking up trees.”

Jon laughs too, much to his surprise. It’s been a long time since he’s laughed, he realizes, and quickly has to push against the door in his mind where Beholding threatens to provide him with an actual by-the-second count of how long it has been since Jonathan Sims has laughed. “We should probably head back. I have, you know...work.”

“Of course you do.” She rolls her eyes, but turns back toward the way they came.

The walk back to the Institute takes them a bit longer this time, with Jon stopping twice to rest his knees. Daisy is patient with him, leaning against her crutches and staring blankly over his shoulder. They make it back to the Institute and he again holds the door open for her.

Basira is there when they finally make it down the stairs to the Archives. She studies the both of them with the same cold stare. “I thought you both had gone home.”

“We were out for a walk.” Jon says. “Did you just get back from, er, speaking with your contact?”

Basira stiffens. “Yeah. And I got some information that I’m going to follow up on tomorrow.” She goes back to poking around in the file on her desk, not offering up any more explanation into either the nature of that information or her follow-up.

“Um, good, good.” Jon says, mostly to fill the silence. Only then does he realize that Daisy is gone from her spot beside him. He looks around, but the Archives are empty besides him and Basira. She couldn’t have gone far, not with her crutches, but his heart still beats a little faster against his oddly numbered ribcage.

“She went into your office.” Basira supplies.

He looks up in surprise. She hasn’t even looked up from her folder, still studying whatever is inside with a familiar intensity. “Oh. Uh, thank you.”

She flips the page. Jon goes into his office.

Sure enough, Daisy is there, sitting with her back against his desk. Her crutches lay on the floor beside her. He closes the door behind him.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to,” She speaks through gritted teeth, “leave you there.”

He sits down next to her, despite knowing it’s going to mean a world of pain for him tomorrow morning. He doesn’t tell her it’s okay, but he knocks his elbow gently against hers in something that might mean the same thing. She sighs.

“What if it never gets better, Jon?” Her voice shakes, the neutral tone that she’d been carrying all day wavering at the edges. It brings back memories of being enveloped, being covered in dirt and sediment, of squeezing and pressing and crushing. He doesn’t move any closer, but keeps his arm in place where it’s touching Daisy’s.

Despite being an Avatar of It Knows You, the Ceaseless Watcher, The Eye, Jon could not tell you which of the hundreds of problems in their lives that Daisy was referring to. Sure, he could try to Know, but that would bring out the fangs and claws and he does not particularly want to be on Daisy’s bad side again. And, for once, knowing wasn’t the point. What mattered was being here, with her, in this moment.

“I don’t know.” He said quietly. In the back of his mind, he hoped whatever tape recorder that was undoubtedly whirring right now could hear him. “I think you just have to hope that it will. And if it doesn’t...then you make the most of it.”

The Archives are quiet at night, after everyone has gone home. No Melanie to fidget uncomfortably in the corner, unsure of what to do with her hands, and no Basira to flick through page after page of the same book she’s been reading for weeks. Jon’s office is quiet too, though an old radio plays The Archers through noisy static.

He really should go home, sleep in his own bed instead of in the cot in the spare room. His back always kills him after spending the night on it.

But Daisy is here, and she’s smiling a little at the sounds on the radio and he’s thinking about things other than work or the end of the world for once. They argue about one of the characters, with Daisy thinking he’s being an idiot while Jon is convinced he’s making a necessary sacrifice. The irony is not lost on either of them, but they choose to ignore it, at least for tonight. Tonight they are just friends, friends making fun of people whose problems are not their own.

(Daisy lights up when he proposes a particularly intriguing theory about one of the characters and tries to in vain to convince him to Know if that’s where the plot is headed)

Jon wakes up the next morning on the cot, squished up between the wall and Daisy. Her arm is thrown over his midsection and his ankle is hooked around hers. His back aches and his arms feel sore and the upper half of his legs are buzzing.

The Eye begins reciting a list of which muscles are affected: _vastus lateralis, bracio-radialis, splenius capitis_ —

He presses his cheek back into Daisy’s shoulder and falls back asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> yes the richard thing is from the what the fuck richard vine. i am Not Funny.  
> kudos and comments help free me from the lonely! drop requests down below or on my tumblr (ravenships)


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